Cheryl Spence didn’t know what to think when she heard a loud boom noise “like a cannonball” on Thursday afternoon as thunderstorms were moving through, then saw smoke coming from a light fixture in her kitchen.
Before she knew it, her apartment on the first floor of Regency Apartments at 505 Regency Drive off Cliffdale Road was engulfed in smoke.
“It scared the dickens out of me,” Spence said. “I had gone in the kitchen to warm me up something to eat. I looked up and saw the smoke coming out of the light fixture. It kept getting thicker and thicker. The firm alarm was going off, too, out there.”
She was among six residents living in four, first- and second-floor units in the complex off Cliffdale Road who were displaced after fires damaged four units.
“We gave them some funds for food and clothing because they needed to replace their clothing,” said Lori Nieves, a disaster team coordinator for the Red Cross.
Nieves said the apartment complex was not the only building damaged by lightning from Thursday’s storm. She said a family who lives in a home on Jenna Shane Drive in Fayetteville also were put up for the night by the Red Cross after their home was damaged by a lightning strike.
Spence and other residents and the manager of the complex say they are convinced that a lightning strike from a passing thunderstorm was the culprit.
“I guess the lightning or whatever (caused the fire),” she said. “The bedroom was damaged. The kitchen was damaged. They had to tear the ceilings out. The outside of the building had some damage where they had to take the vinyl siding off.”
Jamie Everitte, Fire and Life Safety Education officer with the Fayetteville Fire Department, said there were no injuries in the fire, and the official cause of the fires at the complex has not yet been listed. “The investigation is still ongoing,” he said.
He said six people were displaced. The dollar amount of the damage to the units has also hasn’t yet been determined, he said.
″(The units) were damaged by water from sprinkler heads and by smoke, so they are probably not all ready,” he said.
The Fayetteville Fire and Emergency Management Units responded to Regency Apartments on Regency Drive at 5:20 p.m. on Thursday.
The first unit reported smoke in several areas, and firefighters discovered smoke coming from between the first and second floors.
Residents were evacuated as emergency personnel began fighting the fire. A second fire was located in the laundry area of a separate apartment. That fire was controlled by the sprinkler system The Fayetteville Public Works Commission was asked to disconnect power to the units, and the fire was under control by 6:24 p.m.
Spence said she is grateful to the Red Cross for paying for three nights in hotel room for her, as well as food and clothing.
The apartment complex requires renter’s insurance, Spence said, which will be paying for a place for her to stay for several weeks while her unit is being repaired from the fire damage.
Angela Raupp, the manager of the complex, said she is also convinced that lightning cause the fires.
“That’s what we believe,” she said. ”(Spence) is not the only one who told me there was loud thunder before the fire started.”
She said in her 17 years of managing apartments she has never seen a fire caused by lightning damage an apartment building.
“We require residents get insurance in the event of something like this happening,” she said. “Thankfully, everybody was OK. Thankfully, this insurance requirement makes this a little easier on the residents.”
